FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

Books by Harry Vandervlist Hogtown Bonbons by Greg Kramer. Riverbank, 149 pp. Addictions can be dangerous, but not only for the usual too-familiar reasons (e.g. you will become a thief, then lose your friends, job, car, dignity, then die alone in an alley). There’s also the risk of ending up on a fairly predictable and tiresome treadmill of highly repetitious arm-jabbing in search of a possibly unrepeatable thrill. Which brings us to Greg Kramer’s new story collection Hogtown Bonbons. And to the suggestion that a writer of Kramer’s energy and singular intimacy with an urban world plumbed by few other Canadian writers (with the exception of Evelyn Lau, much the more austere prose stylist) should perhaps think about finding a new vein, so to speak. Kramer’s earlier books, Couchwarmer and The Pursemonger of Fugu, really did offer something new, something highly coloured yet tawdry yet just plain human. Not only that, Kramer scooped all the current attention being paid to John Colapinto, author of As Nature Made Him, with Couchwarmer’s story of Cherry Beach, a hero(ine) whose ambiguous gender also resulted from ill-thought out surgical interventions. Revisiting similar territory in Bonbons yields a few moments worthy of those earlier books: the lesbian who gets whacked on the head and forgets she’s gay; the wide-eyed young fellow from B.C. who falls into the clutches of bus-station evangelists The Church of The Latent Gay Saints; and an ostrich-and-peacock feather boa-turned-murder-weapon whose tough rubber core shows some literally constricting powers during the Pride Day parade. That’s all to the good in Toronto (the Good), where Hogtown Bonbons were originally serialized in the bi-weekly Xtra! And both Kramer and his plucky publisher Riverbank deserve more attention than they get. But at the risk of sounding like all those grade school teachers with their depressing "could do betters," well: it’s true. Like confections best consumed fresh, these treats were likely tastier in their original ephemeral format. Meanwhile, revisit Couchwarmer and taste the original piquant recipe.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |